


The Eyes You Have Deceived

by SkallYeen



Category: Hermitcraft RPF
Genre: M/M, OC Antagonist, The Weight Of Lies, chapter word counts & release dates in top notes, it's gonna be whumpy later so if that's not your thing Turn Back, plus a shit ton of headcanons, screams always welcome and requested~, so far tho the teen rating and violence cw have not been earned, who is a real Meanie, will add and change tags as story progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22932307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkallYeen/pseuds/SkallYeen
Summary: The word of the Archangels is best left unbroken.
Relationships: Grian/Mumbo Jumbo
Comments: 33
Kudos: 138





	1. Salutations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BastardBin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BastardBin/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Weight of Lies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20027974) by [BastardBin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BastardBin/pseuds/BastardBin). 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word count: 1.3k  
> Released: 2/27/20

Grian can’t help but smile at the way the angel seems so enveloped in his technical work, the prowess he’s so fond of denying shining clear as day as he pieces together redstone component after redstone component. Grian has to feel bad for not being able to help; while he’d joined him in digging the perimeter in the first place, the task had quickly proved too vast for manpower alone, and he hasn’t the slightest clue how to put together the advanced machines being constructed before him. Mumbo seems glad to have him around though, and Grian certainly wasn’t complaining, so he resigned to keeping him company and complementing the work he did now and then, alien as it was to him. He likes to joke about it being magic, but he has to respect the effort that must go into piecing together such complex contraptions, even when Mumbo makes it look easy.   
  
“Oh-- blimey, I’ve run out of pistons. Uh, Grian, you can stay here, I’m gonna make a quick run to Cherry.” Grian perks up from the nearby rock he was resting on.   
  
“I can come! If-- if it won’t trouble you.” Mumbo seems to light up at the offer.   
  
“Of course not! I just figured you wouldn’t want to go into the Nether again,” he comments. Grian flinches at the remark. Was his discomfort that noticeable?    
  
“N-no, it’s fine, the tunnels aren’t that bad. I just… all the lava makes me nervous,” Grian lies. Mumbo nods understandingly and beckons him over.   
  
“Then we’re off.” He heads into the portal, fast on Mumbo’s tail; and though he’s adjusted to the smell and atmosphere of the Nether much more by now, he can’t help the engrained little spike of nervousness at the back of his mind as the mystical purple surface whirls in his vision and the sickeningly familiar feel of the Nether air envelops him.    
  
The never-ceasing smell of ash and blood he’d tuned out from birth, the smokey air his lungs were built for, the cries of the ghasts he’d learned to pinpoint, the suffocating heat he can take without a sweat; it all comes so naturally to him, just right to bring him back to  _ then. _ The only things missing are the screams of his kind as they tear one another apart.   
  
He shakes the thought from his head. He knows there’s no one else here, and the last thing he needs is to give the angel more reason to be suspicious or concerned.   
  
They walk out towards the highway, then both hop into a minecart together at the start of the seemingly endless tunnel. Grian holds on tight to the edge as Mumbo presses just the right button to send them zipping down the track, each of the powered rails they cross lighting up just in time to send the cart down the tunnel at a steady speedy pace.    
  
In what feels like no time at all in such close company with the angel, their cart slows to a stop reaching the end of the track, and the machine at the end whisks it away the moment they step out onto solid ground again. Heading back through the portal, he breathes a sigh of relief at the much friendlier overworld atmosphere that fills his lungs.   
  
The bright sunlight blinds him for a second before his eyes adjust and take in the beautifully chaotic and mismatched shopping district before him. Mumbo takes off towards Scar’s redstone shop, and as he follows suit Grian has to wonder how often the angel must go, to know the path to heart so well.    
  
He happens to notice Xisuma emerging from a shop himself just down the way, right as Mumbo calls over to him.   
  
“Hey, X! What brings you here?” he asks cheerily.   
  
“Eh, nothing big,” Xisuma replies, “Looking to buy some slime blocks. You ever gonna restock that shop of yours?”   
  
“Oh! I keep forgetting,” Mumbo says with a nervous chuckle. “I could go get you some from my farm if you want, after I stop by Cherry.”   
  
“Sure, that’d be--”   
  
Xisuma is cut off as a sudden deafening  _ CRACK  _ ricochets throughout the district. Grian jumps at the sound, feathers puffed up, the hair on the back of his neck on end as he frantically looks around for the source. Mumbo looks half as startled, quickly seeming more concerned for Grian than whatever made the noise.   
  
As the seconds drag on in silence, Grian’s nerves begin to settle; until a low rumbling shakes the world around them. While Xisuma widens his stance and digs his feet into the ground, he and Mumbo instinctively lean onto a nearby tree to steady themselves as its branches tremble and its leaves flutter in the wind buffeting from above.   
  
He looks up to see a thin, barely perceptible jagged line in the sky that the wind seems to swirl from and around. It looks like a crack or tear in the sky--or... no, he realizes, as a familiar bright white glow shines out of it; a break in the very fabric of the place the hermits call their home. He looks down at the others, and Mumbo seems to have recognized it too; the same blinding white that shone from the much calmer portals Xisuma summoned to bring him here in the first place.    
  
The glow of a divide between worlds.   
  
He looks desperately over to Xisuma for an answer. The leader stares up at the tear, brows furrowed in an expression Grian can’t read through the visor. He barely glances at the demon, but is quick to answer the confused and panicked look that Grian for once isn’t hiding.   
  
“A rift. I sure didn’t open it, by the looks of it someone’s trying to force their way in,” he says, tone strong and unwavering. As if in response, the rift erupts into a sound unmatched, some tumultuous branch off of the snapping of a tree and boom of thunder. Looking out from behind the trunk he’d instinctively ducked behind, Grian can see the break has widened, the glow emanating from it unmistakable.   
  
“Grian, take cover.”   
  
Xisuma’s command is so quick in his ear he barely registers it, but the moment he does he scans the area sporadically and runs into Mumbo’s slime shop, its sturdy stone walls most promising out of anything nearby. His mind races with questions for Xisuma, but he trusts the leader’s judgment and can tell following the order before questioning it is probably in his best interests. Luckily, Mumbo is there to ask, and the echo in the slime shop makes his words clear even from outside.   
  
“Why take cover? And--and why just him?” Mumbo frets, shuffling on his feet under the pressure of his clearly shot nerves.   
  
“Because I may have an idea as to who’s on the other side,” Xisuma hisses as the rumbling gets steadily louder and more intense.   
  
Suddenly it’s quiet; deafeningly silent. Then the thunderous noise comes back tenfold and the seam bursts open, widening into a hole glowing so bright he can’t see whatever’s on the other side. The skylights he watches through wobble under the force of the shockwave. All he can make out is how that light gets blotted out somewhere deep within the rift. Shapes moving on the other side, fast and numerous.   
  
Everything about what Xisuma said clicks in his mind the moment he sees dozens of spread pearly white pairs of wings, angels swarming out of the breach in droves.   
  
His rapid pulse thrums in his ears as terror courses through his veins. The shopping district is quickly blanketed in dappled shadows as the angels above form a haunting murmuration encircling the rift, followed by a slightly larger winged form emerging and hovering among them. He can only stare, his heart sinking in looming dread.   
  
He knows  _ exactly _ who that is.


	2. Smoke and Mirrors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word count: 3.6k  
> Released: 2/27/20

“Xisuma?! Xisuma, what’s going on? Are-are those--?”  
  
Xisuma only nods in response to Mumbo’s frantic questioning, not even looking down from the intense gaze he fixes the distant archangel with. Mumbo’s mind is racing, trying to put together _what’s going on, why, why did Grian have to hide?_  
  
He wishes he still had his wings so he could fly up to them and find out, but upon looking up at their looming forms a twinge of terror reminds him that he probably wouldn’t have the courage to do so even if he could. He chooses to blame it on his lack of wings.  
  
“Just--stay by my side,” Xisuma says, “Try and keep calm. I’ll talk, I’m--I’m familiar.”  
  
“You--you know the...?” Mumbo trails off.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“How?! When would you have--”  
  
Mumbo’s cut off by the loud rush of wind as the rift closes behind them all. The archangel’s form begins to lower, gently touching down on the large hill that has towered over the shopping district from the south since their migration. The murmuration of angels divides, some landing nearby their leader and guarding with swords in hand, many others landing a distance away with longbows at the ready. Some continue to circle overhead while others spread out, flying off into the distance over the far reaches of the island.  
  
“Let’s go see what they want,” Xisuma says, beckoning as he starts towards the hill. Mumbo’s content to follow behind the leader, who seems to know what’s going on far better than himself. They cross a makeshift bridge over the river and struggle their way up the hill, coming face-to-face with the archangel immediately after rounding the top. Mumbo finds himself imperceptibly falling behind the leader to let him do the talking.  
  
“What’s going on here?” Xisuma asks, tone and expression far calmer than his words as if trying not to misstep in his speech.  
  
“Ah, Xisuma,” starts the archangel, stepping forward to talk. “Been a while, hasn’t it? I barely recognized you behind that helm.”  
  
Xisuma looks back at the archangel unamusedly. “We both know not to treat me like an old pal, Morael. Why have you come here?”  
  
“Why must you meet us with this defensiveness?” Morael replies, tone riddled with feign innocence.  
  
“You broke in here by force and brought an army of hundreds,” Xisuma says, voice tense in such a way that Mumbo can tell he wants to raise it. “Do you expect us to welcome you like houseguests?”  
  
Morael stares back at him with a stifled scowl at the comeback. “Xisuma, show your face.”  
  
Xisuma freezes at the command. “We have our treaty,” he hisses. The archangel smiles back with some cross of amusement and confidence, glancing behind him as gesture enough towards their vast numbers. Xisuma sighs slightly, bringing his hands to his neck and unlatching something that releases a hiss, before gently pulling the helmet over his head. He runs his fingers through his messy helmet hair to tame it down, turning back to the archangel.  
  
Mumbo hadn’t seen Xisuma’s face uncovered before. Not once in his years of being a hermit, of the many migrations he’d gone through together with the group, had Xisuma taken his mask off around him, and the leader’s increasingly strained breaths give reason enough as to why. He glares at Morael, trying to hide his struggling to little avail. The archangel stares back, deadpan.   
  
“All of it.”   
  
Xisuma’s glare hardens, and Mumbo watches in shock as he lets down a glamour and patterns ripple onto his face, mottled by prolific facial scars. The markings are busy and complex, more so than any end-born angels Mumbo had ever seen; and his heart sinks when he looks back at Morael’s face and sees the resemblance. “And none of that,” Morael adds when Xisuma reaches beneath an armor plate for his breath mask. He lets out a tiny wheeze that would likely have been a sigh.  
  
“That’s the Xisuma I remember. Doesn’t seeing eye-to-eye make things so much easier?” the archangel says sweetly with a smirk, coming forward and bending down slightly to look Xisuma in the eye as he talks. Xisuma glares back unamusedly until he returns to his own space.  
  
“N-w wh-t d- y-u w-nt,” Xisuma grumbles, voice torn and distorted without the aid of his helm. “Y-u co-ldn’t h-ve c-me thro-gh h-re w-th a wh-le m-rm-r-t-on j-st t- h-mili-te m-.”  
  
“True,” affirms Morael. “How many do you have living in this world of yours? I’m sure you couldn’t have built all these... _ridiculous_ structures, alone with just you and your flightless friend here.” Mumbo couldn’t if he wanted to miss the way the archangel gestures at him with slight disapproval in his voice, as if his lack of wings were to be shunned.  
  
“They were stolen,” Mumbo says defensively. He instantly regrets the words as they come out, afraid he’d said something that’d upset the powerful being before him, but perhaps more worryingly the archangel looks back at him in knowing intrigue.  
  
“By whom?”  
  
“I--” Mumbo stammers, unsure of whether covering his genuine unknowing would help or hurt. “I… don’t really know, to be honest, some demon. What does it matter to you? It’s not like I’ll ever meet them.”  
  
A strong chill runs down his spine as, in place of any kind of verbal response, Morael’s face slowly splits into a wide smile, before breaking eye contact with another nod towards Xisuma. “We will gather your people here. Most importantly your angels.”  
  
“Wh-t c-uld y-u n--d th-m f-r?” Xisuma growls back. “If y-u d-re h-rt -ny -f th-m--”  
  
“Then _what_?” Morael cuts him off with an amused grin, gesturing vaguely around himself at the horde of armed angels surrounding them. “You couldn’t stop us if we chose to.” Mumbo doesn’t miss how Xisuma visibly shudders at the suggestion. “But no. I vow--on the word of the Archangels--our hands shall not bring harm to or steal away any of your angels in this transaction. We have our treaty after all, do we not?” Mumbo looks over at Xisuma, who stares back at Morael through suspicion-riddled slits of eyes. Even Mumbo knows the power of the Archangels’ word, said to be true and reliable as the rising of the sun, that for it to be broken would be to break the presence of the stars. Xisuma seems to recognize that too, though his bitter expression doesn’t fade.  
  
“F-ne.” he hisses, before turning to Mumbo. “G-t F-lse t- ro-nd -p th- -ther -ngels.”  
  
“There’s no need for that,” Morael says sweetly. “Our angels have been sent to scour the land for your members. They’ll be bringing everyone here.” Without thinking, Mumbo glances back at his slime shop, barely able to make out the silhouette of Grian watching through the skylights, undiscovered and unharmed. He turns back, hoping they hadn’t taken notice. If they did they gave no signs.  
  
“Ah, speak of the devil and he’ll come,” says Morael, his tone too light as he directs attention to a squad of angels carrying in a dazed and sluggish Cleo, a very concerned-looking Joe fluttering fretfully alongside and around the group before coming to her side when they set her down. He helps her keep on her feet, murmuring reassurances and letting her lean against him. She gasps in pain as Joe brings his arm too close to an arrow wound on her side, reflexively grasping at the bloody patch as the smoke of an active potion slowly leaks out between her fingers. She glares daggers at the stranger angels around them, holding Joe close as he supports her, bringing wings around her comfortingly in a way Mumbo knows she’d never let anyone else do.   
  
Arriving shortly after is an unharmed False escorted in flight by her own collection of angels, and later each of the grounded hermits come arriving at the scene with their escorts, quite a few being carried in bearing a wound similar to Cleo’s. Confusion, anger, and fear murmur their way among the small crowd of hermits before Morael silences them with a hand in the air.  
  
“I’m sure there’s much wondering about what we came for and why you have all been gathered here,” Morael starts, “And our intention is simple; we have something you desire. Or, at least, what one of your members certainly does.” Mumbo resists the urge to shrink back as Morael looks directly at him, the hermits’ and many of the angels’ eyes following. He jumps at the sight of something odd and glowing behind him in his peripheral vision, and upon looking again he sees they’re a magical projection of his wings he’d lost all those months ago, that proceed to flicker away. He looks back at Morael. “We merely request a favor,” the archangel says, “From us, unto you.”  
  
“-nd wh-t m-ght th-t b-?” Xisuma demands, not buying their friendly proposition for a second.  
  
“To rid you of the hidden traitor among you,” Morael states back, scanning the hermits.  
  
“We’re all friends, we’ve known most of each other for years,” Cleo refutes, pushing Joe’s arm away when he tries to cover her mouth. “What makes you think one of us would ever seriously betray another?”  
  
“You’d have to ask them,” Morael says matter-of-factly. “All those winged among you, come forth. I will tell you as I told your leader, no angels who come forth will be hurt or taken by our command today.”  
  
Slowly, Joe, False, and Wels come forward from the crowd, guided threateningly by the archangel’s pawns. One angel comes by and puts their gloved hand on the side of each of their heads briefly then dismisses them, much to their confusion. Morael stares dead into Xisuma’s eyes.  
  
“You’re hiding them, aren’t you?” he says, drawing close again. Xisuma stares back defiantly, not saying a word. “Hmn. You were always a clever one, X, I’ll give you that,” he says, scanning the concerned crowd of hermits as if considering something. “But not good enough a liar. Bring them here.”  
  
“F-r y-u t- t-rm-nt? -’d _n-ver._ ” Xisuma spits, flinching back only at the little excited glint that peeks through Morael’s gaze.  
  
“Oh?” he perks with a spreading sinister smile, “I think you’ll find otherwise.” The archangel steps back again and snaps his fingers once. Before he can react, a flurry of feathers and the sounds of flapping wings overtake Mumbo’s senses, and he makes out only the startled scream and whimper of a familiar feminine voice in the midst of it all, followed by the defiant protests of another, and the terrified cries of names.  
  
“STRESS!” he hears Iskall’s voice call after the scream, “NO--DON’T HURT HER! DON’T--!” his cracking voice is cut off by his own grunt of pain, followed by indignant exclamations and curses from Cleo.  
  
As the commotion clears, many hermits are left at the point of a sword; most of them to be kept back from Morael and those brought near to him. Held tightly and with blades to their throats are a notably ticked off Cleo and a scared stiff Stress, muttering curses and pleas respectively.  
  
Xisuma’s collected bitter gaze finally breaks into one of utter panic as he’s fixed with the terrified gazes of each of the hermits, Joe’s and Iskall’s especially panicked and pleading. His eyes dart between Cleo, Stress, Iskall, and Joe, then glare back at Morael with a cross of hatred and terror; before Stress’s distressed cries as her blood trickles down her neck and Iskall’s matching pleas finally tip him over the edge.  
  
“-K-Y! St-p! Let-- l-t th-m g-.” Tears well up in his eyes as he chokes out his surrender, and he squeezes them shut as he turns to Mumbo with a pained expression of regret and deep apology. “Go--” he stammers, “g- g-t Gri-n.”  
  
“They--they won’t hurt him though?” Mumbo asks, “He vowed not to hurt them…” Xisuma looks at him with heartbreak in his eyes, then turns away and hangs his head without a word, breath shuddering beyond the effects of being without his helmet. Several seconds pass before Mumbo takes the hint to go without an answer, uncertainty and fear reverberating in his skull as he cautiously makes his way down the hill.  
  
He can feel eyes burning on him as he runs off into the shopping district, making his way down the paths and towards his slime shop. They’re not going to hurt him, right? They’re not. Morael vowed on the archangels’ word, they’d never let it get out that their word was broken. He tries to shake the lingering doubt from his mind. It’s too late now, and he doesn’t--  
  
He doesn’t have a choice.  
  
He freezes in his tracks. No matter what they do to his little angel, Morael just showed his willingness to _kill_ to get what he wants. He’d be helpless to stop them. The thought makes him stutter in his step, taking a moment to force his breathing to still before pushing the idea from his head harder than he’s ever banished any thought, and pushing onward down the path. They won’t hurt him. They _won’t._  
  
As he comes around, he sees a flash of white feathers in the doorway, and coming through the entrance yields him the sight of a quivering Grian staring back at him in dread.  
  
“M-Mumbo, please,” he starts. His voice tired and winded from panic, grasping for sympathy. “Don’t… don’t, I-I’ll do-- I can give you whatever, I can help, I-- please, don’t let them find me here.”  
  
Mumbo’s more than a little taken aback by the angel’s sudden desperation, already scolding himself mentally for leading them right to his hiding place even if he couldn’t convince Grian to come on his own.  
  
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, Gri.” he coos in the most comforting way he can, “They just patted our heads and let us go, it’s fine. You can come out.”  
  
“N-no Mumbo, you don’t understand--” he frets, voice becoming noticeably further laced with panic and desperation. “They’re going to _kill_ me!” The little angel is shaking like a leaf, wings tight against his body, breathing quickly becoming shallow and rapid. His voice drops to a terrified mutter. “I-if I’m lucky. Gods, they may tear me limb-from-limb--”  
  
“They promised not to hurt you.”  
  
“THEY PROMISED NOT TO HURT AN _ANGEL_ _!_ ” he cries back suddenly, recoiling the instant the words come out of his mouth. He stares back at Mumbo, eyes wide with fear and regret as a few seconds of silence ring on.  
  
“...What do you mean?” Mumbo asks, voice shrunken by the sudden snap. Grian looks back and forth between the angel’s eyes with an unreadably pained expression, then a shaky sigh with which he hangs his head. Mumbo hears the fluttering of wings behind him as angels land by the entrance of the little building, waiting expectantly.  
  
“I’m sorry, Mumbo.”  
  
Grian lifts his head, bitter acceptance in his eyes as he blinks tears away. He makes his way around Mumbo and toward the angels, shaking profusely but not resisting in the slightest. Without a word, he takes off alongside them, oversized wings carrying him easily over to the hill that Mumbo quickly finds himself having to sprint towards to keep up.  
  
His heart skips a beat as he feels the ground suddenly fall from under him, an angel whose presence he’d missed swiftly flying him up onto the hill and briskly placing him back down onto the grass where they wanted him as if his weight were nothing. Grian, having just landed, shuffles and folds his wings next to him. His nerves are visibly frayed beyond belief, his breath coming out in fluttering huffs even as he tries to force them into a slow and deep rhythm, and Mumbo feels not for the first time that he’s missing something he’ll hate to discover.  
  
Grian’s gaze slowly lifts off the ground, and it’s almost uncannily gray. Gravely passive, accepting, _hurt,_ perfectly accentuated by barely-visible drying tear streaks tracing down his cheeks from the corners of his eyes. Morael looks down at him and they lock eyes, but for once his intimidating glare is not met by one of panic or defiance. Grian’s calm is betrayed only by the tremor in his throat that Mumbo knows means he was holding back tears. Grian steps up to the angel who had just checked the others, and they place a gloved hand to the side of his head.  
  
It’s to Mumbo’s surprise that the angel grabs hold of something invisible and wrenches it down in response, forcing Grian’s head down to where he staggers to stand and flinches in pain at the force. Too quickly, swords are held to his neck, and Morael looks a cross between gratified and enraged before his voice booms.  
  
“SHOW YOURSELF, DEMON, TO THE EYES YOU HAVE DECEIVED, ELSEWISE WE REVEAL YOU BY FORCE!”  
  
It all clicks in Mumbo’s head just before the little purple markings under Grian’s eye fade in place of red stripes on his cheeks. The gloved angel has grabbed hold of a horn, and the pristine white of his feathers shimmers away into a corvid black. A thin, spear-tipped tail is unveiled by the magic, tucked meekly between trembling legs. What little skin he has exposed is covered in extensive scars, and barely visible slitted pupils on a backsplash of red avoid meeting anyone else’s gazes as he silently blinks away tears.  
  
“Disgraceful caitiff,” Morael hisses as some of the hermits look on in shock. “Hadn’t even the decency to confess your own slanderous transgressions.” Grian closes his eyes, brows furrowed slightly. “And yet you’ve the audacity to parade about as one of our people?” He glowers down at Grian as gloved angels come around and bind the demon’s wrists behind his back. “You deserve every ounce of retribution coming your way.”  
  
Heartache pangs in Mumbo’s chest as he notices an almost imperceptible nod from Grian. A feeling of dread quickly follows suit as Morael turns to him. “And you.” Mumbo’s nerves spike and he shuffles fearfully, his voice suddenly gone. “Yes, you, come forward.” Mumbo follows the command, glancing past Morael at Grian as he’s restrained further before Morael knowingly cuts off his line of sight with an outstretched wing, forcing Mumbo’s attention onto the archangel before him.  
  
“Wh-what is it?” Mumbo stammers, unable to hide his distraction over Grian’s state.  
  
“I bestow unto you what the demon robbed of you,” he says, and the feign wings flicker in the edges of his vision once more before he finds himself able to open real wings of his own like he always used to. It feels unnatural, but he chalks it up to time without them until Morael speaks up again. “Or rather, a replacement of it. That vermin has _tainted_ your gift of years before, its victim shan't be punished with the imposter’s impurity.”  
  
He stretches and flexes his wings, stroking them slightly. They’re there, he can feel them and control them. He has wings back. Part of him wants to take off then and there, embrace the joy of finally having his long-lost flight returned to him, but he can’t tear his mind away from the demon. He turns back, staring at the archangel.  
  
“You’re not going to hurt him,” he says, the words sounding like a confused cross between a fear-laced demand and a question, and honestly he’s not sure which he meant. Morael stares back at him in almost stunned silence, offense creeping onto his face; over the lack of thanks or his concern for the demon, Mumbo can’t tell.  
  
“I restore your very angelhood, and you’re concerned about the wellness of the scourge who tore it from you in the first place?” he asks. Mumbo takes a deep breath and, after a moment, nods, unfamiliar courage bubbling up from somewhere deep within him even as fear chills his mind at the way the archangel stares back. Morael’s wing has idly drifted back to its resting position and he can see Grian among the angels once more, staring back at him wide-eyed with a cross of emotions Mumbo can’t quite unfurl. Morael looks too caught up with him to notice and block their view again, however; especially as Mumbo sees Xisuma step up to his side, followed immediately by Cleo, then Wels, Joe, Iskall, more and more of the hermits stepping up to his side. Their silent message is clear, the archangel’s bewilderment admittedly fulfilling.  
  
That is, until it twists into a smile once again, of the usual confidence and an ounce of… pity?  
  
“Oh, poor gulls. The demon has you all manipulated well, hasn’t it? Has you like lambs lining up for the slaughter,” says Morael, “and in place of the wolf.” He scans the crowd. “Fools. No, we _are_ going to hurt him. Profusely.” He sees Grian tense with fear at the horrifying assurance, tightening his dark wings around his body such that they hide his face. Morael calmly looks Mumbo in the eye. “And one day, you’ll see past his charade and be grateful we did.”  
  
With that, the archangel turns away, a white portal gently opening up before him. Many angels accompany him, while others threaten to skewer any hermit who dares try to follow. Mumbo has to do something. He has to _stop them,_ he can’t just let them take Grian--but his nerves are too shot, his heart too torn, his mind too swarmed, and he can’t move. He can only stand there helplessly, stunned like a deer; as everything is torn away from him with a final rush of wingbeats and sudden dead silence of the world seamlessly snapping shut behind them all.


End file.
